Local Nonconformist Teens Struggle To Find Acceptance

Even Outsiders Look For Structure In Lives

WILLIAMSBURG — Every day this past school year, the staff at Lafayette High School would line up the cafeteria tables in the same straight rows, along the same floor tiles, in the same pattern.

A small thing, that should not be underestimated, said assistant principal Chuck Maranzano. Even among the so-called nonconformists in this school - kids with black lipstick, oversized coats, and hair with purple hues - students want predictability. If something disrupts their world, even the layout of the cafeteria tables, they get upset.

They would ask Maranzano, "What did you do with my table? Where's my table?"

"That tells me that students need a lot more structure than we think," he said.

Ever since the shootings in Littleton, Colo., parents and school administrators have been trying to understand the role of the student group in schools. Because the killers in Littleton were associated with a Gothic fringe group and had been feuding with other student groups, particular interest has focused on groups with extreme styles or dress.

But Maranzano said students in groups are less a worry to him than students in no group at all. He is a lot more concerned about a student who looks withdrawn or depressed than one who wears black lipstick.

"Black lipstick, black clothes are just a desire to express one's self differently," he said. "Those kids have a place or a group to relate to. We're really worried about the kid that's out there who's isolated."

Kim Koskamp, 16, said she found a place to belong at Lafayette. She said she used to be the kid standing alone at recess, playing imaginary games to keep her mind occupied.

Today, she is wearing black and a dog collar, with a spider web drawn up her hand and arm. Kim joined the group in black because people were nice to her. That was its appeal. "They accept who you are," she said. Like Kim, not all the students in this group call themselves Gothic kids. Many are simply students with varying interests, looking for a safe place to express themselves.

Louis Messier, an associate professor at the College of William and Mary, said it's important that students feel they fit in, somewhere.

"Developmentally, at the adolescent age, their mission in life is striving for independence. They kind of weaken their ties to family at that time to strengthen their peer groups," he said. As parents become less of an influence, groups become more of one, and they play a strong role.

Messier, a faculty member in the school of education, and two other researchers studied eight school districts in the Tidewater-Peninsula area four years ago, looking at potentially violent youth groups.

He said students join groups for many reasons: to fit in, to make friends, to be protected, to define their turf, or in other cases, to get drugs or money. One of the survey's most significant findings was that robbery and sexual harassment took place among students in some groups.

But many groups do nothing wrong, Messier said. "For many of these kids, this is just an innocuous rite of passage."

At Lafayette, Maranzano and other administrators walk the cafeteria during the school year, talking to students to let them know help is available if they are having a hard time. In class, teachers look for students who seemed alienated, don't talk, try to sleep, or appear to be in a fog.

It is in the cafeteria where the school's different groups are most on display. On a school day a few weeks ago, the jocks, preppies and popular kids claimed the sets of tables near the middle.

Another clique claimed a table nearby - this time, a group of bulky young men who called themselves "rednecks," talked about pickup trucks and used incorrect grammar on purpose. Meanwhile, the ragtag bunch in black lounged in the hallway in the lower commons.

Moving right along, students named other groups: the skates, who use skateboards as means of travel; and bandies, who carried musical instruments to school. Some students said their black classmates hung out together in what is regarded as another group, claiming another section of the cafeteria.

But students are complicated, and so are the groups in the cafeteria. Enter the former athlete turned Gothic kid, the "Gothalete" who plays Dungeons and Dragons as well as sports. "There's a lot of crossover among the groups," said Maranzano.

There isn't any one group in school that causes a problem, he said. Rather, individual students in various groups may cause trouble at different times.

Even the tough-named "rednecks" are friendly, said classmates in other groups.

"We're some of the baddest people in this school," said Daniel Smith, 18, a "redneck" who goes by the nickname Smitty and owns a truck.

"You get rejected a lot, and you finally find a place where you fit in," said Colin Bradley, 17, also a "redneck." When he was younger, he had friends at Toano Middle School but no niche, he said.